


a good sharp edge is a man's best hedge

by chickenfree



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Fluff, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22375162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickenfree/pseuds/chickenfree
Summary: "He looks – slightly unhinged, Dan decides. Obviously unhinged, since he’s making eye contact with strangers on the tube. That’s the only explanation for why the seat next to him is still empty."
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 31
Kudos: 142





	a good sharp edge is a man's best hedge

**Author's Note:**

> A little gift for Blue, with apologies to Cal who I think got inspired by the same tags I did.

He hates sitting next to people his own age. Business people his mum’s age are ideal - they’re even less interested in talking than he is. Old ladies are usually okay. Sometimes they talk too much, but they just ask the questions his nan asks, so it’s alright. Sometimes he’ll sit next to a couple if they seem safe – they have to be too involved with each other to talk to him, but not too involved to be gross. 

His absolute worst nightmare is sitting next to someone his age and finding out that they have, like, friends in common or something, or that their roommate went to school with his cousin and they just moved to the city and he – absolutely not. He’s not taking the chance. He cannot get sucked into a friendship of obligation with some adolescent on a train. 

Which is why this is a disaster. He took a look around at all the available seats when he got on, and maybe it was his fault, but he locked eyes with a guy who couldn’t be more than a few years from him, if that. The guy gave Dan a sheepish smile, like he knew that the only free seat was the one next to him. Dan had been so horrified that he’d forgotten to school his expression into anything normal.

He’s not going to sit there, obviously.

He’s  _ obviously _ not going to sit there.

It’s just – the trip is so long, and his arm is already tired from hanging on, and –

He glances back at the seat, considering. He locks eyes with the guy again. He’s looking up at Dan with a sort of vague open smile. He looks – slightly unhinged, Dan decides. Obviously unhinged, since he’s making eye contact with strangers on the tube. That’s the only explanation for why the seat next to him is still empty.

The guy raises his eyebrows, tilting his chin a little at the spot next to him. Dan notices even though he’s studiously staring at the window behind his head.

Now it’s like they’ve been having a conversation, and Dan’s the dickhead who’s blowing him off. And plus – everyone else has a spot, and here Dan is, standing awkwardly in the aisle, looking like a fucking giraffe got on the tube all because because he won’t suck it up and sit next to a probably harmless weirdo. Christ.

He gives up.

“Hi,” the man says quietly when Dan finally makes his shuffling way over and slumps into the seat. He sounds cheerful, and northern in a vague way that Dan can’t quite place.

“Hi,” Dan says, carefully looking anywhere but in his stupid eyes. He’s here and he’s not doing more than that.

“Sorry, this is –” the guy starts.

“It’s fine.”

He stuffs his earbuds in before he can hear any more.

—

He wakes up to something jostling at his shoulder. 

He thinks it’s his roommate’s cat, for a second, or maybe his roommate? The more he comes to, though, the more the whole house is swaying, and there’s so much noise, and he’s with someone, and – oh,  _ shit. _

He goes dizzy from how fast he wrenches himself upright. Spots crowd the edges of his vision when he blinks his eyes open. He can’t decide for a moment if he should look at the guy and acknowledge his monstrous behavior, or if that would be some kind of weirdo escalation – so he doesn’t, just mumbles out a “sorry” and stares studiously at the floor. 

“It’s fine,” he replies. He’s still weirdly cheerful. He genuinely sounds like he doesn’t mind being a stranger’s pillow, which – again, that’s unhinged.

Dan twists around in his seat, trying to figure out where they are and whether he’s missed his stop.

“What were you listening to?” the guy says, voice cutting into his confusion.

Dan gives up, sinking back into his spot.

“What?”

“On your phone? I couldn’t figure it out.”

“Oh. Uh. Probably Kanye I think?”

“That’s cool.”

Dan shrugs, absently scuffing a foot against the weird tacky floor. He hates standing, but he gets a little – riled, sometimes, by being boxed in like this in a seat for so long. Falling asleep isn’t a bad way to solve that, he supposes. Even if he fell asleep on a weirdo.

He’s a little lost in his thoughts when he notices.

“Are those NASA shoes?” he blurts out, voice a little too loud for the situation.

“Yeah,” the guy says, “aren’t they cool?”

Dan nods, sucking the edge of his lip between his teeth so he doesn’t say any other mad things. Or any other things, in general, since it’s already weird to be talking to this guy in the first place.

“My brother got them for my birthday,” the guy continues. He tries to tilt his feet so Dan can see the sides better, but he’s too tall to really wiggle without knocking into the barrier or into Dan. It doesn’t seem to slow him down, though; his knee connects with it with a solid thunk a second later. He doesn’t seem to notice. “I’m trying not to wear them out, but they’re so good, I have to let them see the light. You know? They have to like, see their adoring public.”

Dan feels his face scrunching more than he actually participates in the action. His whole brain feels muffled with sleep, like he’s experiencing everything after it happens. 

It’s a weird thing to say about a pair of shoes, but this man is clearly some kind of social delinquent anyways.

“Where are you getting off?”

Dan has to think quickly to stop himself from making a dumb joke.

“You ask a lot of questions, mate,” he says instead, but it doesn’t come out as grumpy as he meant it to.

“Haven’t asked you your name yet.”

“Dan.”

“Phil,” the guy says. “It’s really nice to meet you.”

Dan in no way would consider falling asleep on a random stranger on the tube  _ nice _ or even really  _ meeting, _ per se, but whatever.

“I just wasn’t sure where your stop was,” Phil continues. “I didn’t want you to miss it, but I didn’t want to wake you up, so, uh. I can tell you if we passed it? I’m not trying to be a stalker, sorry if that sounded weird.”

“I’m transferring at Green Park,” Dan says.

Phil falls silent, and Dan can’t figure out why until he looks up and realizes he’s gone pale and wide-eyed. 

“Where are we?” Dan says, flat.

“Hounslow.”

_ “Hounslow?” _

“I mean, right before the eastern stop, but –”

“Hounslow? Like as in  _ Hounslow?” _

Phil looks a little bit amused and a little bit like he thinks Dan might strangle him right here, in full view of everybody.

“Uh. Yes. Hounslow as in Hounslow, I think.”

“Fuck,” Dan says eloquently, pressing the heel of his palm against his eyes.

“Where were you going?”

“Mate – ” 

“Sorry, that’s weird.”

Dan groans. He can’t bring himself to open his eyes.

“Some shithole in Vauxhall,” he says eventually. It already seemed a bit mad when he was planning it hours ago, but now that he’s attempted it and gotten lost and he’s describing it to a man on the tube – shit. It doesn’t seem like it was ever a good plan. “Some – I don’t know. It’s like a friend of a friend has a promoter job, and I don’t even like the friend, but I thought I should go since I didn’t go last time, and now it’s fucking late and –”

“Oh no,” Phil says tentatively, like he doesn’t know when he’ll get a word in edgewise. Dan supposes he has that effect on people.

He turns to look, blearily blinking his eyes open. Phil’s looking at him with what seems like genuine worry, like it’s his fault Dan’s undertaken this stupid quest and ended up in fucking Hounslow for the trouble.

“Where – I mean, don’t freak out – but where do you live? Out here?”

“Bexley,” Dan mutters.

_ “Bexley?” _

“Shut up.”

“Who lives in Bexley? Anyone? Cows?”

“Fuck off, you dick. I live in Bexley.”

“No one lives in Bexley,” Phil says seriously, like Dan’s lost it and he’s telling him the facts.

“Where do you live?”

“Hounslow,” Phil says, all cheerful suddenly.

“No one lives in Hounslow,” Dan parrots back, sneering.

“I do. Anyways. Are you going back?”

“To Vauxhall?”

Phil smiles. His face is about eighty percent just cheekbones, which could be interesting – if Dan cared, which he doesn’t. Obviously. He’s not going to do anything with a freak from the tube, even if it’s a friendly freak from the tube.

“We’re at least four lightyears from Bexley,” Phil says. He has a very studious look on his face, now, like what he’s saying isn’t completely bonkers. Dan thinks he catches a little crinkle at the corner of his eyes, though. Not that he’s paying attention. “But you weren’t going to go all the way back there anyways, right?”

Dan… emphatically is not going to tell this man that his plan was to sleep on his ex’s couch. And that he doesn’t know if he  _ has _ a couch. And that he never actually offered to let Dan stay there, just said vaguely that there was a party that some of their mutual friends were going to and that it could be nice to catch up, whatever the fuck that means. 

He could go back to Vauxhall, but the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that he might as well plan on sleeping in the street for all he’s looked ahead on this one. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s zoned out, really. He hazards a look at Phil, even though he hasn’t thought of a good lie yet. 

Phil’s looking back with completely open concern, forehead creased. Dan can’t imagine how he gets around like that.

“Do you always look this worried?” he says, a weak attempt at deflecting.

“I have a couch,” Phil says instead of a real answer. He looks a little surprised that he’s said it.

“No –”

“I – you don’t have to. You can get a cab, or a hotel or something, but I just –”

Dan can’t imagine a world where he could afford to get a fucking hotel room at the drop of a hat like that. 

“It’s fine, I’ll sleep on the way –”

“– thought I would offer,” Phil manages to finish.

Dan hesitates longer than he wants to.

“You could stay with my brother and his girlfriend if you can get a cab part of the way back, if you don’t… just want to stay with one person? I get it. I’m scared of murderers too,” Phil says when Dan doesn’t answer.

That surprises Dan into laughing. He would not have guessed that, considering Phil looked at him on the tube and babysat him while he took a nap and is now offering to let Dan stay at his house, apparently alone with him.

“What?” Phil’s voice cuts in, indignant.

“You just don’t seem like you have a lot of fears.”

It’s a bizarre thing to say to a stranger, really. He realizes that as he says it, but – Dan’s never been good at thinking ahead.

“I’m scared of horses. And giraffes. And clocks.  _ Why _ are you looking at me like that?”

Dan snaps his mouth shut. He has to try not to just openly beam at this absolute weirdo.

“Clocks?”

“I don’t like that time passes. And that we record it. It’s not our business.”

Dan is absolutely failing at not beaming at this absolute weirdo. He can’t even see himself right now, but he just knows that he must look like a right maniac. He’s seen this expression enough in the mirrors at the studio to know what this smile looks like. He can’t remember the last time he’s made this face outside of acting classes, but – nevermind that.

“It’s not funny,” Phil continues, pulling out his phone and unlocking it, opening Twitter and then closing it almost immediately like he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He says the next bit under his breath, so quiet that Dan almost doesn’t catch it. “I have anxiety.”

Dan softens almost immediately. This stupid trip is giving him emotional whiplash. “Me too.”

Phil shrugs instead of really acknowledging his response, opening Instagram and closing it again a moment later. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be mean about it. I’m a – well. I’m scared of every bug.”

“Really?” Phil says, still staring at his phone. Dan – doesn’t mean to be unreasonable about it, but now that he’s watching Phil’s profile, looking at the way his shoulders are hunched in all of a sudden – he thinks he could do anything on earth just to make him smile.

“Moths,” he says. “Yeah. I run away from moths. Like, you know how moths flock to a light because they think that’s the moon? I flock away from moths, because I think they’re moths. And you know what? I’m absolutely right.”

Phil finally looks up at that, smiling a little. 

“I mean, that’s a phobia and not anxiety, really,” Dan blurts out. “But I think they’re kind of related, and I’m scared of loads of other things. I just think it’s interesting how –”

“Dan, I hate to cut you off –”

“Oh, it happens all the time.”

Phil’s face falls a little. He hesitates for a second, too, just staring silently at Dan even though he apparently had something to say.

“It’s just that the one after this is my stop,” he finally says. “I don’t, um, mean to pressure you.”

Dan swallows. The reality is that he doesn’t have a better option, and the later it gets the worse this situation is going to look.

“You promise not to murder me?”

“Yes,” Phil says seriously. “We can write a mutual no-murder contract while we walk.”

“Okay. And you promise that we’re not secretly in Islington and that you’re not going to try to corner me into a weird scheme with your weird aunt?”

Phil blinks.

“I think I could arrange… a weird aunt scenario… if that’s what you’d like to get out of this,” he says, carefully.

“Not a second time, thanks though,” Dan says, right as they start to slow into Phil’s station.

—

Phil does actually write down a mutual no-murder contract on his phone’s notes app while they walk. He takes ages to finish it, considering it basically just says “the undersigned will not kill Dan” and “the undersigned will not kill Phil.” He makes Dan ‘sign’ his name by typing it in a funny font. He also makes Dan pinky-promise him that he’ll uphold the contract, which seems excessive.

“Do you want my license as collateral, so if I kill you at least I can’t drive away?” Dan asks.

“You have a license?”

“Well, no. I mean, I have – a license. Just not the card.”

“Oh. So did you leave it at your last crime scene?”

Dan laughs, probably too loud for such a quiet street late at night. 

“Shush,” Phil scolds, but he’s smiling.

“I left it at my mum’s, I think.”

“Mhm. I bet that’s what you say to all your victims,” Phil says, skeptical. “The classic mum’s house license card defense, right?”

—

Phil does just about everything short of tucking Dan into bed once they get to his place. He gets the water for him instead of leaving Dan to wander aimlessly through the cupboards. He digs a brand new toothbrush out, inexplicably, and wrinkles his nose when Dan mumbles that he was just going to use his finger. He gets multiple blankets out. He even lays them out across the couch, and then he apologizes for not having a real futon, which is downright bizarre. Like Dan’s going to complain about a free couch? Please.

They don’t talk much about anything other than the basics. Phil’s plainly exhausted now, and Dan starts to think he’s intruding more than a little on his routine. Dan assumed he’s passed out, at one point, but then Phil shuffles back in, hair damp and shoved off his forehead, pajama bottoms pulled on so haphazardly that Dan vaguely wonders if he’s ever seen trousers before. 

“Just wanted to say good night,” Phil says, quiet into the dark. He sounds – so genuine, still, like he would hurt Dan’s feelings if he didn’t say it.

—

Dan wakes up to a coffee maker burbling. He’s disoriented for a minute, trying to remember if he’s at his or in Vauxhall again or –

Well, neither of those. 

He’d really thought he’d set an alarm.

He shuffles around for a minute, trying to make enough random noise that Phil will remember there’s someone in his house and not, like, pull a knife on him or something. He can hear something – maybe a spoon against a bowl. Phil’s definitely up. Dan doesn’t know what he expected, but for someone who talked to a stranger on the tube, he’s terrifyingly silent. 

For a minute, he debates whether the no-murder contract had a clause saying it ended at eight o’clock in the morning. He didn’t ask Phil to send him a copy or anything, which – he should know better, really.

“Hi,” he says, when he finally gets the will to get up and face his destiny.

Phil’s slumped in a chair at his little table, completely expressionless. He’s shoveling cereal into his mouth with incredible speed. 

He makes a weird noise that might be a greeting. 

“Sorry, I thought I’d set an alarm,” Dan says. He’s starving and under caffeinated and up hours earlier than he normally is on a weekend.

“It’s fine,” Phil says into his cereal, finally approaching something that sounds like human speech.

Dan – can’t figure this dude out, but whatever. It’s not the first time he’s had to awkwardly leave in the morning like this. He can do it on autopilot and not feel weird about it.

He digs through his jacket pockets for his phone. It’s dead. That would explain why he’s still here, probably. And why he can’t get home, if he hasn’t got a map or any way to figure out where the fuck Hounslow even is beyond  _ far away. _

“Fuck,” he mutters. “Look, I’m sorry to bother you, but my phone’s dead. Can you just, like, tell me how to get to the tube so I can get out of here?”

“No.”

“What – what the fuck? Is your sense of direction that fucking bad or – or, is this a kidnapping? Are you actually going to murder me? Because I... I don’t really want to be murdered, actually,” he finishes, weakly.

Phil’s looking up at him with a strangely wounded expression. More wounded than he would expect from a serial killer. Dan briefly thinks that maybe serial killing takes all types, but – Phil doesn’t seem like he’s very good at faking his expressions, from his limited experience.

“You’re a guest,” Phil says. 

“A guest of  _ what?” _

Phil’s looking at him like he’s the one who’s lost his marbles, only there’s no joke behind it this time. Dan is this close to having a meltdown in this weird man’s living room.

“Of my house,” Phil says. He sounds like Dan’s grandma did when he was an unreasonable teenager. “Have a coffee first.”

“No, come on, I’m in your way.”

“I don’t mean to be a dick, but I’m literally not walking you there until I’ve had four coffees, so you might as well drink one.”

_ “Four?” _

That – explains certain things, Dan realizes as he says it. Phil scowls at him.

“I have to be zazzed,” Phil mutters. Dan doesn’t even know what that means, but whatever.

If Phil wants him to have coffee that badly, he’ll have the stupid coffee.

“There’s cereal,” Phil says from behind him while Dan pours and stirs and generally clatters around. Phil’s not much help when it comes to finding a spoon and a bowl and a mug, but the kitchen is small enough, and half of his things are just strewn on the counter in full view. 

“You have a child’s taste in cereal,” Dan informs him. He picks a box anyways, detouring around the marshmallows that are inexplicably on the counter.

He finally sinks into the chair opposite Phil. They eat in silence, since Phil is apparently nonverbal at this hour. 

“How many coffees have you had?” Dan asks after a minute, and Phil silently holds up two fingers. He’s pushed his cereal to the side already. He keeps hammering his coffee, only losing focus to stare at Dan’s mug between gulps.

“Fine, I’ll drink faster. Calm down,” Dan says.

“Oh – no, uh, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Did I make it weird? I’m sorry, do you drink yours black and you don’t think milk is legal?”

Phil makes a face for a split second, but he looks – unsure? Dan has trouble reading this look. He moves to pick up the mug so they can get this over with. 

Oh.

There’s a rainbow design wrapped around the other side, that he didn’t even see. Fuck being left handed, honestly.

“Is it because I accidentally got a random mug,” he says, flat. He doesn’t actually want any part of this conversation. Not Phil looking at him like he sees  _ through _ him because of a stupid coincidence, and certainly not the part where he’s sitting at a stranger’s table at the crack of dawn, in some god-knows-where quasi-village, getting stared at with open curiosity before he’s properly woken up.

He almost just stands up and leaves, maps be damned. Then he looks up, and Phil’s staring at him wide-eyed. He looks, like – well. 

“Is this from that one coffee shop,” Dan starts, slowly. Phil nods a little.

“Did you get it during Pride last year?”

Phil shakes his head. “Year before that.”

“From the guy that has the weird food truck, right?”

“Yeah.”

Dan nods, taking a slow sip. Phil’s smiling a little, suddenly shy like he’s not the same bloke that accosted Dan on the fucking tube not twelve hours ago.

“Is that the place that has that horrible marshmallow drink?” Dan blurts out suddenly, wrinkling his nose. He can’t believe he forgot about his run-in with the godforsaken marshmallow drink. 

Phil nods, smile widening. The way his eyes light up at the mention of it is kind of hysterical. 

Dan hasn’t really looked at him until now, he realizes. He’s still struggling to move Phil out of the terrifying stranger category in his head, but seeing him like this – hair a mess, bundled in an old worn hoodie, glasses a little askew, looking for all the world like a weird addition to his own weird clutter – it’s hard to find him as threatening as he seemed an hour ago.

“You really don’t talk much before coffee, huh?” Dan says. He’s down to the last dregs of his mug, but he suddenly wants to drag it out a little bit.

Phil shrugs. “Words are hard,” he says, eventually.

“Yeah. Weird thing to say from someone who talks to people on the tube, though. If this is honesty hour.”

“It’s not.”

Dan laughs, too loud as usual. “You know that’s not  _ normal, _ though, right?” he says.

“So?”

“I know this worked out alright, but I don’t want you to get murdered because you keep doing this, is all. I just think if you’re going around talking to people on the tube, the murder chance is like – at least seventy percent. I mean, that could be a conservative estimate. Could be ninety and you just got really lucky.”

Phil’s staring down into his mug with a look that Dan can't quite place. He goes back to his own coffee, drinking the last of it while Phil processes or whatever.

“Thought you were cute,” Phil finally says, so quiet Dan thinks for a moment that maybe he’s misheard.

“What?”

“Thought you were cute,” he repeats, a little braver, even though he won’t look at Dan at all.

“You think –” Dan splutters “– what the fuck? – You think talking to people? On the tube? Is a method of flirting? Phil, I honestly thought you were an axe murderer, not – not  _ flirting _ with me.”

Phil giggles. He hazards a glance up at Dan, so openly hopeful that Dan could die. “You just said it worked out alright, didn’t you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to Daye and Cat and Jude for betaing!
> 
> Come find me at [chickenfreeblog,](https://chickenfreeblog.tumblr.com/) where we're currently investigating why pants would go to space.


End file.
